Here Be Dragons
by Chiwizard
Summary: Prequel to O Brother, Where Art Thou? Read that one first or you won't get this at all: Look here, friends, and behold the tragic tale of two innocent hedgehog brothers...but science has no use for innocence...


I really SHOULD be working on my other, active fic for this section, but...I'm not!

Instead, I have done something I have never done before - A SEQUEL! Or at least I'd **like** to say that...

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You see, I was thinking about making a sequel for _O Brother, Where Art Thou?_, but it occured to me that A) I didn't have the faintest clue where to begin, and B) I wanted to explain the stuff I already had up more than I wanted to think up new stuff.

So here you are, at the Prequel. The huge gaps of information are supposed to be there, if you are confused - reading _OBAT_ carefully explains a lot, while rest may/will show up in the actual sequel, which I will admit to having started.

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So! Go forth and read, ya'll!

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Disclaimer: I do not own Sonic the Hedgehog

Claimer: I own all the stuff I invented, especially Raven

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Professor Gerald Robotnik eyed the displays, excitement warring with anxiety for control of his expression. For the sake of his assistants - bright young minds, honored by the chance to help their mentor in his greatest work yet - Gerald kept his expression as neutral as he could. This was going to be IT, he could FEEL it!

IT, of course, was the final proof that altering a living creature's DNA to accept a high level of influence from Chaos Energy was not only doable, it was safe, feasible, and it would save countless lives…not the least of which of those was the life of his precious granddaughter, Maria.

Oh, Maria…Gerald's eyes watered momentarily at the memory of his granddaughter's birth. A moment of such joy - had not his son and daughter-in-law tried for almost ten years to create a child? - but, in the wake of the condition that crippled the newborn baby, it had swiftly become a time of horror and fear.

Maria Robotnik had come into the world with several of the base pairs in her DNA mutated, shriveled - in some places, not even present. It was an error of the worst kind that had not satisfied itself with the baby's immune system, but had wreaked havoc on her nervous system as well. Gerald had known something must be terribly wrong when his son called him, stammering confusion over an inexplicably premature labor. Maria had entered the world outside of her mother's body half-dead from some disease none of the doctors could identify.

Within short order, Gerald had the answer - it was a common bacteria these days…but humans had stopped succumbing to it before they had learned to walk upright! Maria had emerged, silent and twisted, with skin so pale it was nearly transparent, showing the total ravages of the disease attempting to claim her…

Gerald shook his head clear of those thoughts. They were only a distraction at this point. Maria had lived, and had spent her infancy in complete sterile isolation. Not a single germ or virus had been allowed near her as her parents despaired and her grandfather wracked his scientific genius for an answer. The first step had been simple enough: if germs were the problem, then Maria had to go where germs could not follow. The cold vacuum of space was a perfect isolation barrier. That was when his prototype research satellite received the title of ARK, and became the place where Maria could be kept safe from the unholy flood of disease that was all her homeworld had to offer her, and where Gerald could turn his attention towards something no one believed was possible: finding Maria a cure.

ARK had been, from the very start, a hotbed of experimentation. Already, the team working on the mining of interstellar bodies for minerals Earth lacked had started laying out the first sections of what would be the prototype device - this version of the laser was oversized, but because that made it too big to be powered up, things were safer this way. Other projects in a variety of fields were already finished, and more were still to come. There was plenty of room on the ARK for everything…and that was why Gerald's primary work was kept far away from the rest.

There had been some small successes already, but the line of reptiles being worked on were proving too unstable for Gerald's tastes. They simply didn't absorb Chaos Energy without putting up a fight, which always left them completely useless afterwards. Gerald was in the process of using mammals, but they weren't turning out well at all. But this time, he thought he had it.

Modifying DNA to similar states as Maria's was, Gerald had produced a dozen specimens of different mammalian species, let them reach her current level of maturity, then zapped them with Chaos Energy. So far, the results had been…just a bit gruesome. But this time, Gerald told himself for what must have been the hundredth time, he had it!

A peculiar strain of hedgehog DNA had recently come to his attention. It preserved its unusual robustness despite Gerald's tampering, but shattered like glass when aged unnaturally fast - he had tried to cut corners last time and had wound up with a decrepit wretch who hadn't lived long enough for a Chaos boost.

"Professor!"

One of his assistants startled Gerald from his musing.

"Sir…the specimen…it's…"

Gerald saw it right away - it would have been most peculiar not to.

All of his specimens were grown in a specially designed tank that Gerald had engineered years ago for just such use. Kept submerged in a bath of nutrients, it was the idle method for producing subjects with abnormalities in their DNA such as Gerald was inflicting. The tank kept them isolated…so isolated that not even Gerald himself could sneak a peek at the creatures before they were ready to be 'born'…and why would he? Chaos Energy, even when kept inside such odd containers as Chaos Emeralds were, was by its nature chaotic, requiring constant study to keep his information up-to-date.

But all the times a specimen had been created…none of them had never multiplied inside the growth tank before! Where one infant hedgehog should have been floating, tethered to the apparatus by the monitoring devices as it drifted through the greenish, life-sustaining ooze…two floated instead! The tank was capable of nurturing up to a dozen such creatures at one time, of course, and the second specimen was tethered securely in the same manner as the first, but still, for there to be two at all…

"Amazing…" Gerald breathed after a moment's observation, "I see, I see! The alterations in the DNA must have reacted to the fluids in the tank and divided a last time, producing twins! This is extraordinary…"

Extraordinary and fortunate. Gerald had shied away from cloning - he was trying to AVOID decaying DNA , after all - but now they could compare the results of the Chaos Energy on identical DNA…scientifically speaking, this was like loosing a nickel and finding a twenty. Gerald had one of the hedgehogs sealed away in an cryogenic isolation pod, in order to preserve it until it was needed, and had the other one removed the ordinary way.

Despite being identical in their DNA, the hedgehogs were of different coloration - one lighter, one darker. Gerald picked the lighter to be worked on first, mostly because of how pale Maria had been when she had been born. Even though it was the wrong color for it, Gerald dubbed this hedgehog as 'Raven', in respect for the birds that feasted on rank and rotting corpses and never contracted their illnesses - image aside, that was the level of immunity he hoped for. The other, whose fur ran closer to black, remained nameless, save for the complicated code that indicated it was the next in line for experimentation.

…

Raven was approaching his third birthday when Gerald had a very brilliant idea. Maria's own birthday was coming up as well, and she was quite lonely, living in the safe sterility of space. There wasn't anyone for her to be friends with, and Gerald had been determined to fix that.

So, his mind reasoned, why not introduce Maria and Raven? She would love a small furry animal to play with, and it would give him extra data on the similarities of their DNA development to work with later. Raven did resemble Maria, in a way. She had been left permanently pale by the trauma of her birth. Intriguingly, Raven had turned out to be a very light gray all over, and even had pale blue eyes, far paler than Maria's had ever been.

The only problem with this plan, Gerald had to admit, was that Raven was too strong for his granddaughter to handle. Even though, or perhaps in spite of, his DNA being similarly crippled, Raven was extremely athletic. He would hurt Maria without meaning to, Gerald was certain, until he figured out how to behave around those weaker than himself.

Not about to risk his precious granddaughter in some sort of bizarre training attempt for the pale hedgehog, Gerald considered his options. He needed Raven to have experience dealing with something fragile, but it had to be something that could stand up to the rough handling it was sure to get. That was when Gerald remembered the other hedgehog.

Of course! It was absolute genius! Gerald immediately began the necessary preparations.

…

A few weeks later, Raven was sitting around and waiting for the Doctor to bring some big surprise. The Doctor had said to wait, and so Raven had to wait, even though he hated sitting around and doing nothing when he could be running around in the gym. Raven loved running. But today was - oh yeah, Raven remembered, it was his 'birth-day'…whatever that meant. There had been another one a year ago, a year after his birth, when he turned two…but unlike last time, the Doctor had been too busy working on something to pay any attention to him until today. Raven didn't like being ignored one little bit. But if it was for a big 'birth-day' surprise, then maybe he didn't mind so much.

Without any warning, the door whooshed open. Raven saw the Doctor standing in the doorway, started walking over to see what it was he had been waiting for - and stopped dead in his tracks.

There was a little dark gray spiky THING standing there too, right next to the Doctor! Raven had never seen something so creepy in all his life - it was almost as big as HE was! And it was staring right at him with its creepy orange eyes!

"What's THAT?" Raven exclaimed, pointing at the offending spiky thing.

"Don't be ridiculous," the Doctor frowned, "This is a hedgehog, the same as you are!"

Raven hesitated, not wanting to make the Doctor upset. Actually, when you thought about it, it did kinda look like how he did in the mirror, Raven decided after some more staring.

"Why's it so little?" he asked.

"He is younger than you, Raven," the Doctor said, his tone a little more patient now, "His name is Shadow. He and you are brothers."

Raven blinked. He didn't know lots of words yet, but he especially didn't know that one at all.

"What's a brothers, Doctor?" Raven asked.

"Brothers are sons of the same parents," the Doctor explained, going over Raven's head almost completely, "They're part of the same family. Now, as he is younger than you are, you must watch over him."

"Why?" Raven asked, confused.

At this point, the Doctor seemed unable to explain himself clearly. He kept repeating himself, talking about family and brotherhood and making no sense at all. Finally, Raven figured out that he and this little Shadow hedgehog were going to have to live together for a while. And maybe it was okay- such a tiny little thing might be really neat to play with! Of course, afterwards the Doctor would let Raven do the special training program without any weird little 'brothers' hanging around.

…

Shadow stared around the huge, unfamiliar room from his spot clinging to the Doctor's leg.

He didn't like it here - there was a giant white THING bigger than he was, a loud and scary thing and he didn't like big, loud, and scary. It only got worse when the Doctor made to put Shadow alone in the room with the scary thing. Shadow squirmed around, trying to stay firmly attached to the Doctor. If he had learned enough words, Shadow would have been protesting loudly, but he was still too little.

…

Observing from another room, Gerald found his perfect plan was leading straight into disaster.

Raven had not understood the concept of brotherhood after all, and perhaps it had been a mistake to inform the hedgehogs that they were related. It seemed as though Raven had mistaken his brother for some sort of toy, and Shadow was curled up in a corner in less than fifteen minutes, crying and bruised from being kicked around.

…

Raven stared at the littler hedgehog in disbelief. How could someone who was like him be so BORING? If this was what a 'brothers' was, the Doctor could take him back now - this wasn't any fun at all! Annoyed, Raven went over to the toybox and took out one of the puzzle cubes to play with. He had to pass by Shadow on the way over, though, and seeing the littler hedgehog so upset made it too hard to concentrate on the puzzle.

Then Raven started feeling really bad - was Shadow crying because he, Raven, had been bad? Maybe he had been bad at being a brother? He didn't WANT to be a bad brother…

Hesitantly, Raven came over to where Shadow was. The littler hedgehog was still snuffling, and it took a whole lot of staring on Raven's part before he would even peek up at him.

"…Sorry," Raven said.

Shadow blinked - he didn't understand that word yet.

"I'm sorry," Raven said again, "I never was a brothers before. Don't know how yet."

This, Shadow understood perfectly. Not only were they words he knew, the dark gray hedgehog understood perfectly what it was like not to be able to do things like the Doctor or other hoo-mans could yet, like tapping the comptupeter.

"You wanna try 'gin, being brothers?" asked the light gray hedgehog.

Shadow perked up. He nodded, very fast, with his usual amount of energy - in fact, when he wasn't being scared or kicked, Shadow was VERY energetic - and did something else, something he was good at; saying a new word.

"Bruvver!" Shadow laughed, grinning widely up at his new Big Brother Raven.

…  
…

Raven was turning fourteen this year, and Gerald was quite satisfied with his progress. Shadow was turning twelve, and he was turning out to be a fine young hedgehog in his own right, even with Raven's head start. Gerald could have studied the dynamic between the two hedgehog brothers quite happily, but duty called. Physically, Raven had reached the same level as Maria, which made it THAT time again…

"Raven, I am so proud of you," Gerald said, finishing up the little speech he had devised for this occasion, "Your progress has gone so well, and now you're ready for the next step."

"What step?" Raven asked, curiosity aroused.

Shadow's shuffling in place showed that the younger brother was just as eager to learn what was to happen next.

"Why, just a small procedure," Gerald said, smiling good-naturedly, "I call it the Ultimate Life Formation Procedure. It's really not so amazing, and you'll hardly remember it afterwards, but this is a necessary milestone for you, Raven, and I know you'll do just fine."

"Can I watch?" Shadow asked immediately.

Inwardly, Gerald blanched. The procedure wasn't something any of his trained collages could handle, and they were grown men, professional to a fault. Of course it would be foolish to even consider letting the still-immature Shadow observe, especially with it being so risky.

It still had its gruesome side, but Gerald was fairly confident Raven would survive. The last creature to go through it, the Biolizard, had lived, though it was still on mechanical life support and hadn't developed very well. Gerald had been pleasantly surprised but baffled to note that its brain waves had INCREASED afterwards, instead of flat-lining like its predecessors. With the lizard testing program terminated due to poor results the Biolizard was currently enjoying a leisurely retirement from science in the balmy environment of the ARK's engine core.

Oddly, perhaps because of those increased brainwaves, the Biolizard behaved very strangely sometimes - a few technicians, during routine care taking duties, had been savagely attacked by the enormous prototype life form. Gerald was even thinking of having it encapsulated in stasis soon, if the Biolizard's agitation got too much for his people to handle. There was no summoning help from the planetside anymore; these days, scientific discovery was being viewed with a bit more suspicion than hope. GUN in particular was nosing around a little TOO eagerly for Gerald's tastes, looking for any excuse for getting a foothold on the ARK.

Turning back to Raven and Shadow, the latter of which was still waiting expectantly for Gerald's reply, Gerald pushed those thoughts away for another time and said carefully, "No, I don't think so. This is a minor procedure, but rather delicate. Distractions are not what is needed."

"But I can be very quiet!" Shadow protested, "Honest, you'll forget I was ever in there at all! Please, please?"

"You cannot!" Gerald snapped, "Shadow, if I find out that you managed to sneak into the procedure room, you are going to be in VERY serious trouble. Am I understood?"

Gerald had startled himself with that sudden outburst, but Shadow looked like he was almost on the verge of tears. Raven, more mature mentally, also looked shocked. It wasn't anything about Gerald's temper, they had both done enough to see the really fiery side before, but neither hedgehog had been more than a few rooms away from each other since they had been introduced, and never before had any tests happened to just one that the other brother was not allowed to watch.

…

The procedure went ahead as planned the next day. Much to Gerald's delight, it was a complete success. Oh, the changes in appearance were a little unexpected, but as side effects went, Gerald couldn't have asked for anything better. Physically, Raven was now the healthiest creature in the area, including Earth.

Mentally…well, fairly often during the follow-up testing, Gerald would become aware of a silvery stare following in across the room. And really, maybe it was a little justified - he'd had to grossly understate the procedure, after all…but that all but ended in under a week. On the psych tests, Raven read perfectly normal.

Gerald had planned to keep Raven separate from this point on - there would be so much testing to do now, no one would want to go through the procedure if there was no record of how one was afterwards, of course - but he had neglected to factor one thing into his thinking.

Shadow, already upset by the unexpected separation from his brother, had turned inconsolable the second he learned there was a very high chance that he'd never lay eyes on Raven again. Gerald had to constantly reassure the dark gray hedgehog that yes, his brother was alive, and yes, his brother was fine, but Shadow really was too sensitive to be permanently separated from Raven. Telling Shadow his brother was dead was a solution, but it would have destroyed him all the same - and if it hadn't, Shadow could very well run into Raven on the ARK and where would Gerald's cover story be then?

…

Raven kept his eyes on Professor Gerald as he was lead through the corridors to his new apartment. Even now, almost two and a half weeks after the Procedure, his whole body still ached with a throbbing echo of that horrific agony. It was a miracle he wasn't dead, Raven had decided the second he'd woken up afterwards, but death was sounding more and more fun every day.

In fact, Raven was so caught up in his misery that he didn't realize where they were until Professor Gerald palmed the door open. His and Shadow's apartment - where was Shadow?

"I see no reason you cannot continue staying here," the Professor was saying, "There will be a three-day break in testing; I must compile all the data and file the results. I shall call for you to come when I need you again, of course…"

The second the door was closed, Raven stared at his childhood home. It looked exactly the same, and for some reason that made him uneasy. The doors to the bathroom and his and Shadow's rooms were closed, making it seem as if no one lived here anymore. This made Raven worried - where was Shadow?

Abruptly, the door to Raven's old room slid open, just enough for someone to look through. There was a muffled gasp, then the door opened all the way to reveal a slightly bedraggled-looking Shadow.

'Does he even recognize me?' Raven wondered, feeling worried.

There was no need for that - seconds later, Raven was being hug-tackled by an enthusiastically happy younger brother.

"RavenRavenRavenyoucamebackyoucamebackwherewereyouimissedyou -"

"Spaces! Use spaces, Shadow!" Raven cried - he was laughing, it was weird, it felt like he'd never laughed in his life, but it was so good to - "And don't be silly, of course I came back, I promised I'd be just fine!"

"But - but you went away for so LONG!"

Shadow had his face buried against Raven's shoulder, and it was staring to feel kinda wet as the younger hedgehog started crying.

"And I'm a terrible brother 'cause I promised you I wouldn't cry!" the dark gray hedgehog finished, starting to cry even harder as the thought crossed his mind.

"You're fine, you hear me?" Raven said, "You said you wouldn't cry from being sad, but you're happy now, aren't you? Its okay to cry when your happy, midget! So neither of us broke our promises, right?"

Swayed by Raven's logic, Shadow sat back, wiping his eyes. Then he blinked, apparently taking in the details of Raven's appearance for the first time, and gasped again.

"Raven! You look so awesomely COOL!" Shadow exclaimed.

"Oh?" Raven said, his own enthusiasm starting to taper off, "Do I?"

"Yeah yeah!" Shadow said, nodding, "Look, you're all white and silver and your spines are doing an extra-whoosh thing and its so awesome! Do you have superpowers now? Are you gonna be a superhero? Ooh! Ooh! I wanna be your sidekick!"

For some reason, this made Raven laugh again.

"No," Raven said, "I don't think anyway - and stop reading all my old comic books if your brain's gonna rot like that, Little Brother. Maybe I can do some stuff, but I know is that the Doc - the Professor wants to see what I can do."

"Very cool!" Shadow declared, "You're so lucky, Raven. I can't wait 'till I get old enough to go through the procedure too! I mean, I don't know if I wanna be all bright-colored like you, but that would be so awesome anyway…"

Raven felt his expression become fixed as his brother went on and on about how happy he was that he'd be old enough in only a few years. Raven knew better - he remembered too much to even consider that his brother would like Professor Gerald's Ultimate Life Formation Procedure at all - IF he survived.

Luckily, Raven had at least two years to figure out a way to protect his brother from this impending doom. It was just like the Professor had said when he and Shadow first met - older brothers had to protect their younger brothers.

And personally, Raven couldn't believe that Professor Gerald would let stuff like that happen on the ARK - wasn't the Professor the one in charge of the whole space station?

'If I was in charge of the whole station, nobody would EVER have to go through that procedure. Nobody ever. If only I was the one in charge…' Raven thought to himself.

…  
…

Gerald frowned down at the readings he was getting. Raven's progress was quite amazing, and his power and control were phenomenal, but still…something was not right.

Perhaps it was the strange indications Gerald was getting from his data on Shadow that was bothering him. Lately, the younger hedgehog seemed to be growing worse in all areas, and was apparently struggling to stay at even those diminished levels. In fact, if one looked over every fluctuation of the data, Shadow had been on a downward trend for the last year or so…

'Perhaps I'm imagining things,' Gerald thought to himself.

It didn't seem likely, but it was getting late today, and he certainly wasn't infallible. Perhaps there was an error in the data collection process, or in the computers that complied the results. All of which could be dealt with quickly and quietly in the morning.

As he signed off for the night, Gerald blinked as he heard the door to the laboratory open, then close only seconds later. Taking a moment to check - were the doors malfunctioning today as well? - Gerald thought he had mistaken the sound for something else. That thought lasted only a moment or two, before he heard the OTHER sound, the sound of something whimpering.

Following the new sound, Gerald was quite astonished to discover its source to be a small, dark gray bundle of quills curled up in one of the corners. Carefully - this was a hedgehog, after all - Gerald reached down, tapped it on the shoulder, and said, "What are you doing there, Shadow?"

Shadow recoiled away from Gerald's touch in a manner that was quite unlike the normally energetic young hedgehog, and his whimpering took a sharper note, almost as if he was expecting to be - what, in trouble? Possibly even hurt? Whatever it was that was making the young hedgehog so very distressed, Shadow was so fixated on it that he didn't hear Gerald's words.

No more fooling around. Gerald reached down - so what if Shadow was a hedgehog? Gerald had forgotten to take off the armor he had been wearing during his most recent inspection of the Biolizard, not more than a few hours ago - and scooped the quivering bundle up easily.

Shadow uncurled - rather shamefacedly - the second he was placed on a nearby worktable. Once he registered the scientist's presence, the hedgehog seemed extremely unwilling to meet Gerald's gaze.

"What's wrong?" Gerald asked immediately, "Hiding in a corner like that - has something scared you, Shadow?"

Shadow shook his head 'no'. His whole body screamed that the young hedgehog was trying to lie, that YES, there was something scary in the station, and that if Gerald had any sense in his head, the human would be terrified as well.

"Have you been wandering around in areas not permitted to you?" Gerald questioned, working off a sudden hunch - if Shadow had accidentally seen something like the Biolizard, then this reaction would make perfect sense…

He was answered with a tense shake of the head, but Shadow apparently unaware of or unable to hide the information his body language was conveying - and if Gerald was good at anything, it was reading and interpreting information. Shadow's 'real' reply went something along the lines of 'no, not wandering, but doing something against the rules, something common sense said better than to do'. But what, and where?

Unfortunately, further questions along that line produced nothing but fervent denials, and Gerald most certainly couldn't read minds. Eventually, he had to conclude that he wasn't going to get any useful answers out of Shadow this way. Perhaps Raven would have better luck, the two hedgehog brothers were never ones to keep secrets from each other.

"Well, come on, then," Gerald sighed, letting some of that thought come out with his next words, "I suppose there's nothing for it but to take you back to your room. It is almost your curfew…perhaps your brother will have an idea of what it is you have been up -"

In that instant, Shadow cracked.

Gerald had never felt more startled and discomforted in his life when the dark gray hedgehog burst into tears and sobs and scattered words of apology. At first, Shadow seemed to be full of nothing but apologies, but scattered in the tears were what he was sorry FOR, and THAT was the most horrifying part of all.

"Raven?" Gerald wanted to gasp, "All this time, he's been plotting against me?"

But there would be plenty of time for wondering about such things AFTER the ARK was secured. Gerald returned to the computer and accessed the satellite's systems not a moment too soon, either: tampering and data alterations appeared before Gerald's eyes.

With no time to waste, Gerald activated the alarms.

…

The body that had once been truly owned by Raven Hedgehog laughed to itself, even as it piloted the fleshy thing towards the ARK's escape pods. Foolish humans, foolish creatures, foolish little bags of meat! It didn't REALLY matter if this one died, now - its job was done. This takeover had failed, but it had never been meant to succeed anyway.

Itself-as-Raven had done damage to the dataflow of the ARK, stolen some files, erased others, and sabotaged several areas of research. The little human worms would be so confused - it had chosen the targeted files at random, and even with the system alarms in place, the entire station would be left in serious disarray for a very long time.

But most importantly, some of the human worms, fleeing the sabotage that threatened to end their meaningless lives, had sought refuge in the depths of the ARK's engine core. Foolish, foolish!

Itself-as-Biolizard had taken great relish in ended those meaningless lives as ENTERTAININGLY as possible. Such foolish little worms!

Of course, all of this would bring more foolish human worms up from the planet, just as the human worm in charge feared and Itself-as-Itself wanted. Worms coming in response to terror would think to use more terror to prevent further terror - it would see to that itself if necessary - and more terror would lead to more fear, more rage, and more hatred!

It was such a feast, such a glorious feast, and once the human worm's station was attacked in earnest, the Robotnik-human worm would soon be seeing to nothing but the annihilation of every last human worm, and their little worm planet too.

Annihilation was what Itself-as-Itself loved most of all, after all.

…  
…

Once the metaphorical dust settled, Gerald felt rather surprised to still be onboard his ARK, with permission to continue his research in Chaos Energy. GUN, unfortunately, was onboard as well, but Gerald was still determined to deny them his life's work. Knowing the pompous, militaristic IDIOTS who ran the show down on Earth, they would be more than happy to confiscate any 'dangerous experiments that may threaten the safety of the populace'. With that label, GUN could (and probably WOULD) gut the station down to hull and support beams with perfect impunity.

When Gerald made himself think about it logically - somehow, that was harder to do these days, the man just felt so utterly FRUSTRATED - it made perfect sense. Raven had done serious damage before his escape, and some of the staff had been tragically killed when they had accidentally sought safety in the Biolizard's area. The alarms had set off the very temperamental animal and it had crushed ten people to death.

GUN wasn't here yet, though, and Gerald was doing his best to clear away anything they might try to steal from him. First of all, the Biolizard was to be encapsulated. For the best, really - if Gerald had just done it years ago, most of this mess would never have happened - and he rearranged all the files pertaining to it to block any opportunistic hackers.

The old mining laser prototype was sealed off as well, and every single scrap of information on Raven was erased from the ARK's memory. Gerald did have hard copies of everything, but GUN would never find them as long as he had any say in the matter.

Lastly, there was Shadow.

Shadow was a year younger than Raven had been when the older hedgehog had gone through the ULF Procedure, and was two years below Maria physically. But in order to mask the true depths of his Chaos Energy work, Gerald needed something he could show off as a 'result'. GUN would use the ULF Procedure merely to expand their military might if they learned anything about the details, but if they thought Shadow had been BORN with his abilities…it was a slim chance, Gerald knew, but it was worth a shot.

The procedure went ahead as planned the next day. Two days later, Shadow regained consciousness. The Ultimate Life Formation Device (and the room containing it) were ripped to little metal splinters exactly fifteen minutes later.

Half an hour after Gerald finally managed to track down and contain Shadow, the now black-and-red hedgehog met Maria.

Six months later, GUN attempted a takeover of the space colony ARK.

The GUN organization claimed afterwards that the takeover had been a last measure. Their organization, representatives claimed, had been tipped off (by an anonymous source with detailed, corroborating evidence) that weapons of mass destruction were being developed onboard the ARK, and the takeover was only to have been temporary while GUN ascertained the truth.

Unfortunately for all parties concerned, the scientific staff of the space station resisted arrest, and GUN would later regret the bloody mess that followed as an unfortunate accident. Amongst the hundreds of dead listed was one Maria Robotnik, who was shot while assisting in the escape of Research Project Shadow. She was posthumously tried and convicted on the charges of tampering with evidence, and of assisting the terrorist Gerald Robotnik.

Professor Gerald, who was taken alive into GUN custody, was tried, convicted, and executed by military tribunal within the year.

The Research Project was recovered on Earth within days of its escape from the ARK. Unable to properly study the strange organism with the ARK accident still fresh in the world's mind, GUN officials decided to have the specimen sealed away in cryogenic suspension. Shamed by these events, Gerald's surviving family changed their last names to Kintobor…


End file.
